Molecules 2012, 17, 12910-12924; doi:10.3390/molecules171112910 OPEN ACCESS molecules ISSN 1420-3049 www.mdpi.com/journal/molecules Article Quantitative Studies on Structure-DPPH• Scavenging Activity Relationships of Food Phenolic Acids Pu Jing 1,†,*, Shu-Juan Zhao 2,†, Wen-Jie Jian 3, Bing-Jun Qian 1, Ying Dong 2 and Jie Pang 4 1 Research Center for Food Safety and Nutrition, Key Lab of Urban Agriculture (South), Bor S. Luh Food Safety Research Center, School of Agriculture & Biology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China; E-Mail:
[email protected] (B.-J.Q.) 2 Department of Food Science and Engineering, School of Food and Biological Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China; E-Mails:
[email protected] (S.-J.Z.);
[email protected] (Y.D.) 3 College of Food Science, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China; E-Mail:
[email protected] 4 College of Food Science, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou 350002, China; E-Mail:
[email protected] † These authors contributed equally to this work. * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail:
[email protected]; Tel.: +86-21-3420-7074; Fax: +86-21-3420-5758. Received: 15 October 2012; in revised form: 15 October 2012 / Accepted: 26 October 2012 / Published: 1 November 2012 Abstract: Phenolic acids are potent antioxidants, yet the quantitative structure-activity relationships of phenolic acids remain unclear. The purpose of this study was to establish 3D-QSAR models able to predict phenolic acids with high DPPH• scavenging activity and understand their structure-activity relationships. The model has been established by using a training set of compounds with cross-validated q2 = 0.638/0.855, non-cross-validated r2 = 0.984/0.986, standard error of estimate = 0.236/0.216, and F = 139.126/208.320 for the best CoMFA/CoMSIA models.